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In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute - a white skin.

Desmond Tutu

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Desmond Tutu
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: October 7
Activist
Anglican Priest
Non-Fiction Writer
Archbisphop Desmond Tutu
Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Birth
Eighteen
Land
Biological
Wonderful
Attributes
White
Whereas
Cannot
Racism
Young
Skin
Umpires
Persons
Skins
Attribute
Person
Vote
Possesses

More quotes by Desmond Tutu

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In many ways, when you're a Nobel peace laureate, you have an obligation to humankind, to society.
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All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others
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Most poor people I know are proud and really want not a handout but a hand up. They do have an inherent pride and dignity, and we should treat them as those who have fallen on bad days.
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Never let anyone make you feel inferior for being who you are. When you live the life you were meant to live, in freedom and dignity
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Arrogance really comes from insecurity, and in the end our feeling that we are bigger than others is really the flip side of our feeling that we are smaller than others.
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We used to say to the apartheid government: you may have the guns, you may have all this power, but you have already lost. Come: join the winning side. His Holiness and the Tibetan people are on the winning side.
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In God's family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.
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It makes no sense to invest in [fossil fuel] companies that undermine our future
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I believe in MasterPeace. World leaders cannot push back armed conflict alone. We need the whole world to make this happen.
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One of the things we might want to learn when considering the failings of others is not to gloat because someone else has tripped up.
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I'm coming to believe more and more in the truth that everything we do has consequences. A good deed doesn't just evaporate and disappear.
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Of course, you've got to reckon with the burden of the past. You can't just easily dismiss it. It is a legacy and often you have to carry an albatross. And it won't happen until people are able to have a certain level of trust and try to speak to each other, not as caricatures but as people.
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There are different kinds of justice. Retributive justice is largely Western. The African understanding is far more restorative - not so much to punish as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew.
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We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.
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Anywhere where the humanity of people is undermined, anywhere where people are left in the dust, there we will find our cause.
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True peace must be anchored in justice and an unwavering commitment to universal rights for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin or any other identity attribute.
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True reconciliation is never cheap, for it is based on forgiveness which is costly. Forgiveness in turn depends on repentance, which has to be based on an acknowledgment of what was done wrong, and therefore on disclosure of the truth. You cannot forgive what you do not know.
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When we look squarely at injustice and get involved, we actually feel less pain, not more, because we overcome the gnawing guilt and despair that festers under our numbness. We clean the wound - our own and others' - and it can finally heal.
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We mustn't romanticize suffering. It can turn people bitter and hard, although it does seem to have been almost indispensable in making people into the kind of leaders that we admire.
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I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.
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